Editorial: February 2003

The last editorial I wrote was in August 2001 at which time I was anticipating a move to Washinton, and I wrote mostly about my own plans and changes to OLBIN. With your indulgence again, let me start this editorial with an update.

Lawson doesn't go to Washington

The move to Washington was delayed until a contract for the move could be agreed on by NASA HQ and JPL. Much of the delay was a disagreement over whose travel regulations (Federal vs JPL) I would comply with. Suffice to say that by the time that was sorted out, it was already heading into summer 2003, and my wife and I were planning to spend the next school year with our kids in Pasadena. Plans for the move have been dropped for now.

The Michelson (Interferometry) Summer Schools

As of September 2002 the summer schools are being managed by the Michelson Science Center, with Gerard van Belle as organizer. I've offered Gerard my ongoing support, but I will no longer be taking part in the organization of the schools. If you want copies of the 1999 Course Notes, I still a supply of them, so please feel free to contact me.

I've heard interest expressed by the TPF Science Working Group in having the schools include other high-angular resolution topics, such as coronagraphy. It is possible that the scope of the schools will change in future years.

Interferometry in 2002

2002 was a very good year. Lots of new fringes and some very encouraging progress with many projects. Notable amongst these are fringes with the Unit telescopes at the VLTI and VINCI, likewise fringes with MIDI, fringes with the 3-way IONIC combiner at IOTA, fringes on the 30-m baseline of MIRA-I.2, and fringes with the red table at SUSI (using APDs).

There also seem to be more jobs this year than there are candidates. The job market seems to be very healthy for people entering the field. NPOI is still looking for good candidates (contact Don Hutter), SUSI is looking for applications for Fellowships, the ISI is looking to hire a Senior Fellow, and the Keck Observatory has also been looking for scientists and optics engineers.

The Email Forum that Fabien Malbet and I started in 2001 seems to be doing well. There isn't much traffic on it, but I've found it useful and there are now 214 subscribers, which reaches most every interferometry group in the world. I would encourage you to use it to post links to new papers, to make announcements of various sorts, and not to be daunted if the list-server sends you an error message in French. (You probably deserved it, but try again and email me with any problems.)

The Magdalena Ridge Observatory is now planned as a 8-10 element array of 1.5 meter telescopes with a longest baseline of 400 meters. This change in plans was largely brought about by recommendations by the COAST group. It will certainly be a world-class instrument when it operates, and I very much look forward to the beginning of its construction in 2004.

The European Interferometry Initiative is proposing to become a working group within Opticon. This is a shift in plans, however Opticon is the European astronomy initiative, and has a much wider agenda than interferometry, possibly offering greater support within it.

It looks increasingly likely that PTI will close at the end of 2003. I had however thought that PTI would close at the end of 2002... so it may well continue for several years still.

StarLight ceased to be a flight mission in February 2002. At about the same time, TPF began a phase of expansion of its technology plans, and most everyone who was working for StarLight is now involved in TPF in some way. TPF has also embraced coronagraph technology as a possible route to planet finding. The previous ECLIPSE team, headed by John Trauger, is now an integral part of the TPF technology plan.

Darwin's precursor mission, SMART-2, which was to be shared with LISA went from a two-spacecraft mission to a one-spacecraft mission; and so the separated spacecraft test has been delayed to SMART-3. SMART-3 promises to be dedicated to Darwin-only.

SIM should enter Phase B, sometime mid-2003, having completed the last of its Phase A milestones on October 29, 2002. As a way of explaining what this means, the list of NASA project phases is as follows: Phase A includes work on conceptual designs; Phase B is the definition Phase, including a preliminary design; Phase C/D includes detailed design, development, launch (scheduled for 2009), and validation. Phase E is operations - the science part of the mission.

Various Thoughts on CHARM, Sky and Telesope, and OLBIN

John Davis wrote a very nice summary paper in 1985 on the state of the art in the measurements of the angular diameters of stars.

Measuring stars with high angular resolution: current status and future prospects
John Davis
Calibration of Fundamental Stellar Quantities, D.S. Hayes et al (eds.), 193-208 (1985).

It was written about 10 years after the Intensity Interferometer had been taken apart (its mirrors now grace the walls of the dining room in the Nandewar Hotel in Narrabri) and at a time when the I2T was really the only stellar interferometer measuring stars. I've thought it would be a good idea to update the information in that paper, and so I'm slowing planning a science page for OLBIN that would bring work since then into context. I've also been working with spreadsheets in the CHARM catalog to extract the information that might be relevent.

JPL web-standards have forced me to learn about image maps (note the new OLBIN header), so I've been thinking about a clickable HR diagram with all the stars measured plotted inside it. As for binaries, there have only been 27 measured, so they can be summarized rather quickly.

Part of this excercise was brought on by a request from Sky and Telescope magazine for me to write a popular review article. I felt obliged to come up with some correct numbers, and so that got me started using the CHARM catalog. The article should appear in the May 2003 issue. I will apologise in advance for not including everything that should be included. I am also immensely grateful for all the images and photographs that I've received on request. I can only suggest to the editors what pictures go in the article, and they have an indendent idea of what is interesting, so please be understanding if what you gave me didn't get into print. It isn't possible to do justice to stellar interferometry in 4000 words. The editorial process is somewhat as follows: I supply correct words, they then create interesting words by removing a large number of my correct ones. I hope the text survives this process.

OLBIN continues to grow slowly. I run Web Secretary in the mornings when I get in to track changes on about 200 web pages. I'm also subscribed to email announcements from ESA, ESO, and NASA. When new issues of electronic astronomy journals come out, I usually scan the titles - although I don't track Applied Optics or JOSA A very well. If you can think of any additions to OLBIN that you'd like to see, please email. I'm always interested in expanding it in useful directions.

Best regards,

Peter Lawson.
Pasadena, 6 February 2003.

Maintained by Peter Lawson
MS 301-451, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109

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